


I Need You

by subtropicalStenella



Category: Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Sleep Deprivation, Sleeping Together, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23540002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtropicalStenella/pseuds/subtropicalStenella
Summary: This was supposed to be smut, dammit.
Relationships: CC-10/994 | Grey/Depa Billaba/Styles (Star Wars), CC-10/994 | Grey/Styles (Star Wars), Depa Billaba/CC-10/994 | Grey
Comments: 20
Kudos: 194





	I Need You

It's just after midnight when she feels the knot of awareness that registers as  _ Styles _ fade out into something resembling sleep but not quite. She knows for a fact that he's doing nothing of the sort, because he's still standing outside her door, with Grey. Last night, it had been Grey dozing for half the night, and before that, Styles again, switching off every night since her new apprentice had woken her up six cycles ago and she demanded the last of her men-- _ four, only four, Light carry the others safely home--  _ be let out of cryofreeze. 

She had had  _ words  _ with the Council, when they came out half-healed at best, her blood still on both their hands, Soot still concussed and Bigmouth pretending he wasn't favoring his left arm. But that isn't her concern. Their  _ watch  _ is. Soot and Bigmouth were both on the apprentices' rooms near the creche, she was certain of it. Her new apprentice hadn't been moved to her apartments yet, but they were already attached to their new "shiny." Bigmouth was like a nuna without its chicks, if he didn't have someone to mentor, and Soot was attached to his hip since the incident, though they'd been from different squads. They were handling things better than all their COs combined, likely because of their training and the lack of inherent blame or guilt over the failed engagement. They were told their COs had things under control. They trusted that, and relied on it, however fragile it might be.

_ Void burn it.  _ She kicks her blankets off, grabs yesterday's underrobe from the laundry basket--still mentally in the field in some ways, laundering a layer she hadn't even sweated in seemed like such a waste--and throws it on before stalking to the door and slapping the controls open.

"What are you doing, and why are you doing it?" she asks flatly, less a question and more of a demand, her arms crossed over her chest. Grey goes stiff and Styles twitches "awake." Not enough of a jump to indicate he'd been getting anything like real rest. Grey won't look at her, not after an infinitesimally small tilt of his helmeted head to catch her in his peripheral cam. 

Right, her hair was down to sleep and he'd read  _ somewhere  _ that Chalactans, as indicated by the bronze studs on her brow, were never seen publicly without their hair in braids. It was more indecent than physical nudity to anyone but family, lovers or spouses. She sighs and works it into a fat, sloppy plait while Styles tries to play the whole thing off.

"Just making sure you get your beauty sleep, boss," he says, and tilts his head towards Grey. "Besides, Grey can't take his helmet off. Shinies dig scars, and he's got a real heartbreaker under there now." 

The sharp  _ clack  _ of plastoid-on-plastoid as Grey punches Styles in the upper arm, full strength, echoes through the quiet hall. Good, he's still in there somewhere. 

"Right, of course you would never abuse your position that way, sorry I implied otherwise, Commander," Styles snickers, but she can hear how brittle it is even without the tension headache at the base of her skull telling her so, and she can feel the flat glare through Grey's faceplate, though he doesn't turn to deliver the  _ Look  _ at Styles, who deflates completely. Entirely side-eyed disapproval. Very efficient.

"We can't sleep," Styles mumbles, deeply shamed by the notion. "Barracks sound wrong. Used to Dinii rattling the screws out of my bunk snoring, Eso's fuckawful music coming through his headset all night, Max getting up half an hour before anyone else because that fucking cheap ass piece of shit prosthetic leg needed recalibrating every couple days and he didn't want to be caught off guard or deeked or… or left behind…"

He stops, shuddering, then stiffens the way they all do when they lose emotional control: locking everything away in the hard shell of their armor, within and without.

Light, of  _ course  _ everything is wrong. She's had the last six months comatose or semiconscious to heal and process the incident, to regain her balance after losing  _ everyone under her command  _ in a single disastrous engagement. For them, because of the cryofreeze, it was less than a standard week ago. Worse, they had nearly lost her _ ,  _ the General their very genetic  _ coding  _ and stars only knew how much psychological training demanded they protect with their lives. Trained so thoroughly to believe that Failure was not an option, they would have been shaken to their core by the magnitude of this one.

"It's not so bad, in one of the hangars, or a transport," Styles continues slowly. Both were places they'd have been mostly alone anyway, in the days before. "But then it's the nightmares. Koho, Yva, Kotep, Tech, Rico… you. Watching that four-armed Kaleesh fucker tear through us like a thresher. This whole eidetic memory thing isn't all it's cracked up to be, when it comes to watching the worst day of your life, over and over again."

Watching their brothers, and  _ her _ , die bloody over and over again. She's fairly certain she  _ did  _ die, for a short while. She had found out after the fact that some of her injuries--namely the bruising on her chest and back, and the cracked rib--had occurred after the battle, from the heels of Styles' gauntleted hands pushing her into the rocky ground. Chest compressions, trying to keep her heart beating while Grey breathed for her, forcing air into her remaining lung until their distress call was finally answered, close to an hour later.

"This helps," Grey says quietly. "We're here, you're here. Alive."

"This isn't sustainable, Grey," she tells him, just as quiet. "We're here, we're safe, yes. Stars know we're the safest we could possibly be, in the Jedi  _ Temple _ at the central hub of the Capitol City-Planet of the Republic." 

She can feel him growing tenser, his psyche like a fist tightening, because he knows what's coming next. 

"You can't _do this_ to yourself in the field, Grey, Styles," she continues, and bites back the _ache_ in her chest that echoes through them. Regret-Acknowledgement-Sadness-Hurt. Worst is the _guilt._ The self-loathing _._ The sense that they aren't _good enough,_ that they've failed again, because they aren't unthinking, untiring, unfeeling machines. "You know I have to go back out there."

A spike of genuine  _ fear _ , from both of them, at the implication that she might go without them, because they can't keep up.

"Sir--" from Styles, but he doesn't know what to say from there and just  _ stops.  _

"I need you," she tells them quietly, though some would say she shouldn't. She knows it, they know it, but the taboo of  _ attachment _ among Jedi was more nuanced than commonly thought. Nearly all sapients were social creatures, and the Kaminoans had warped the clones' social instincts into something closer to a pack-bond than what ordinary humans experienced. She was part of their… everything. She couldn't hold herself apart from that, not without damaging their ability to function under her command and alongside her. 

What's more, she genuinely  _ liked  _ them. As friends, companions, just… as people. After all they've been through, holding onto one another was just part of being alive. Jedi weren't unfeeling either, they just refused to let emotion cloud their judgement. 

Her judgement of the situation had led to the admission. It was simple fact: she needed them. Their support, their shared experience, their bond to her and each other, to keep them all from falling into the Void. 

"I need you whole, rested, and alert," she continues, and feels them both grudgingly relaxing. Slightly. They aren't afraid she'll abandon them, not now. She smiles crookedly, trying to be encouraging. "And that means real sleep in a real bed, for however blessedly long we have the Temple's hospitality."

"Yessir, Master Billaba," Styles answers blandly, in the  _ This is a stupid-ass decision and therefore I've elected to ignore it  _ tone he picked up off observing  _ one  _ Council holocall with Grandmaster-General Windu, but luckily has never felt the need to use on her until now. "Fair warning, we pile up like akk pups, and Grey steals the covers."

Well, that's one way to manage the issue, and he certainly doesn't expect her to take him seriously. "I'll manage. There's no armor stand or gun rack in here, but I'm sure you'll think of something."

"Wait--what?" 

He rips off his helmet to stare at her properly: face-naked, so she can see how ridiculous the idea is. He was  _ joking, _ but Grey just shrugs. She can feel his amusement.

"Move it, Captain."

"You heard the General, Captain, move your ass," Grey says, and shoves Styles ahead of him into her rooms with a hand on his shoulder.

Grey had always been the flexible one, an odd trait in a Command Class perhaps, but his seemingly easygoing nature was the result of his innate strategic senses. He flowed with events and adjusted. Styles, for all his wisecracks, smart mouth and smiles, clung to Order, and orders. This… wasn't procedure. It was  _ absurd.  _ He's frozen in indecision and confusion with his helmet in his hands. 

She'll shove him at a chair, eventually, in the worst case scenario.

Grey seems completely satisfied with the compromise, pulling his helmet off and setting it on her nightstand, his sidearm next to it so he can grab it easily. She doesn't tell him he won't need it. They both know, but it helps, and it's normal for them, really.

The way he's taking his armor off and stacking it next to the bed is, too. Boots and chestplate removed last and stacked on top as the most essential pieces. She sits down next to him, turning him to face her with a hand under his jaw, looking over the terrible slash bisecting his handsome face. It's a miracle he kept the eye. His helmet had been sundered completely, rendered unusable, and he'd scratched a deep line in the paint and plastoid of the new one to represent the injury. 

The silvery graphene stitching extends up into his hairline, and the edges are still red and tender as the tissue regenerates. "Looks worse than it is, or was," he tells her calmly. "Head wounds bleed like a stuck roba."

She had seen it happen, seen it fresh, that day, and the day she pulled them out of cryo. One of the many horrors she had needed to process: his face flayed open to the bone by a laser meant to cut through  _ tanks.  _ She lets him have his lie, and discards her robe on the floor next to his armor so she can crawl back under the covers. 

There was still time for her to get half a night's sleep, and  _ any _ for them would be more than they've had since before they went into cryo. Stasis wasn't sleep, it was nothingness, lacking even the dim pseudo-dreams or rest of a bacta coma.

Grey's hands on her back once he joins her are not a surprise, though there is little evidence of her injuries, brutal though they were. Circular scars no more than an inch across, six total. Not one but  _ three _ impaling saber wounds, the first two crossing inside and through her stomach, the third through her chest delivered after: an insult to destroy even her ability to scream as her internal organs burned and boiled and Grievous laughed.

Grey's arms closing around her, pulling her tight against the warmth of his chest, should be a surprise, but is not. There is comfort in touch, in skin contact, more profound than any other sense, and she will offer it to Styles, when he finally rationalizes the situation for himself. She will pull  _ him _ close, when he carefully climbs into bed with them, and  _ clings _ to her.

They need to know she is safe,  _ alive _ .

Grey against her back with his face pushed against her shoulder, both his arms around her waist, breathing deeply against her skin. Styles' hands flat on her stomach and curved around the back of her neck, his head on her chest to hear and feel her heart beating, though the medical examiner's report showed it had stopped at least once. 

_ We lost you _ , comes the unsteady murmur, felt more than heard. 

"You saved me," she tells them.  _ "K'atini." _ It's only pain.

Styles shudders in her arms, something between a laugh and a sob. "That's not how that phra--forget it."

Grey sits up, reaching over her pull Styles up by the back of his neck and knock their foreheads together. "We did. We got her. Not that freak. Us. She's here. We're here. We're all alive. Yeah?" 

Styles nods shakily, his hand coming up to hold Grey the same way. 

There is warmth, between them. More than physical, but there is also that. There is comfort to be found there as well, in the simple intimacy of heat and touch and sweat, in bodies moving together. They would welcome her, and she them, broken and damaged goods coming together to make something new, perhaps something stronger. 

First is healing, and sleep.


End file.
